“When I design, I work very hard to make the interface experience feel like there’s a human on the other end, not a computer” - Aarron Walter (Author of Designing for Emotion)
The given statement made by Aarron Walter points at a significant idea pertaining to the need to perfect the design of an application. It is important to ensure that the design is user friendly and is able to be seamlessly operated upon by the user.
In order to ensure this, it is important to test the UI (User Interface) which can then be undertaken in a manual or an automated fashion. Given the limitations of Manual Testing, there has been an increasing tilt towards the demand for Test Automation. The latter is conducted with the help of certain Web UI Test Tools which are chosen on the basis of specific criteria.
In this blog, we will look at five of the best Automated UI Test Automation Tools. We will begin with understanding the concept of UI Testing, the criteria to be followed for selecting a specific UI Automation Tool as well as look at some of the most popular UI Testing Tools.
What is UI and UI Testing?
UI or User Interface refers to that part of the application or website which users interact with. However, UI is not a singular entity. There can be different forms of UI and the most common ones are: Command-line Interface (interaction is facilitated through feeding commands into the terminal) and Graphical-user Interface (refers to interaction with graphical components of the application or website).
The first impression (which is usually the last as well) that the user acquires of the website is generally determined by the quality of the user interface. Thus, UI is extremely significant in terms of determining the future viability of a software application. Consequently, UI Testing has emerged as a crucial concern among developers and testers alike, as they seek to meet the ever increasing user standards.
UI Testing can be understood as a mechanism for testing the different interface aspects and components of a software, in order to ensure their desired functionalities and user-friendliness.
In other words, UI Testing aims at two things: testing the receptivity of the software application towards the actions of the user as well as, testing the functionality of the visual elements (images, links, buttons and so on).

Furthermore, UI Testing is extremely crucial in terms of testing visual design, compliance, usability and performance as well. It ensures the workability of the application. Alongside, it also seeks to make sure that the interface is as user-friendly as possible, in terms of clarity and intuitiveness. Thus, UI testing is not simply a means to evaluate the functionality of a software application, but is also a means to ensure that users are able to derive the most from a product with the least effort.
What are UI Test Tools?
Automated UI Testing Tools are innovative software tools which help in executing automated tests on applications and software which requires the testing of the user interface. The Web UI Test Tools makes use of test cases in order to ensure that the software application performs its designated functions. It is important to remember that a UI Automation Tool, not only provides for automation of test scenarios, but also provides for meaningful analytics which could overcome test challenges.
Choosing the right UI Test Tools is indispensable for efficient execution of the test strategy as well as for overcoming the challenges of testing in general. Then again, there is much of a debate over the choice of code-based or codeless UI Testing Tools.
However, it is important to remember that there cannot be a universal suggestion and while codeless Automated UI Testing Tools do help in reducing the cost of creating test cases, they might not be favorable in all situations.
In the next section, we will look at some of the considerations which you should keep in mind as you try to opt for a particular UI Automation Tool.